The body of Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, who died last week in Detroit, was reportedly cremated on Tuesday in Hollywood, and a funeral is planned for later this week.
Widow Vicky Cornell, brother Peter Boyle and friends Linda Ramone and singer J.D. King were at Hollywood Forever Cemetery for the cremation, sources familiar with the service told TMZ.
Cornell’s body was flown to Los Angeles from Detroit on Sunday, family attorney Kirk Pasich told Rolling Stone on Monday, and a private funeral will be held on Friday. Pasich told Variety on Sunday that public memorials will be held “when it’s decided”.
The short time between the end of Soundgarden’s May 17 show and 52-year-old Cornell’s death was chronicled in a police report obtained by the Detroit News.
He and the band walked offstage around 11.15pm on May 17. Fifteen minutes later Cornell was in his hotel room, the report said, where bodyguard Martin Kirsten (who used to work for and date Heidi Klum) helped him fix his computer and gave him two Ativan.
At 11.35pm Cornell was talking to his wife, Vicky, who said on Friday through her attorney that she had been concerned because her husband was slurring his words and told her he might have taken a few too many anxiety pills. She called Kirsten at 12.15am on Thursday and asked him to check on the singer, the report said; the bodyguard kicked in the hotel room door, then the locked bathroom door, and found Cornell.
At his final show, Cornell seemed “high” and “was out of character from note 1,” lead sound engineer Ted Keedick told TMZ in an interview published on Wednesday. He said the Soundgarden frontman did not appear depressed.
However, Keedick said: “I’d never heard his voice that way before. He was having serious control problems.”
One concertgoer told the Detroit News last week that as far as she could tell, Cornell’s final show “was honestly great. Nothing seemed off.”
Tuesday at Detroit’s Fox Theatre, the site of that last performance, Norah Jones played a tribute to Cornell: an acoustic version of Black Hole Sun.
